The Three Times I Saw Her
by cougarlips
Summary: Korrasami Modern Day AU. "She flew through the air like a leaf in the wind, breezing from one bar to the other without any apparent difficulty at all. It was with a determined air that I finally looked away to walk towards the skating rink in the second half of the building, looking away from the girl's toned thighs and velvety brown skin dusted with chalk."
1. The Three Times I Saw Her

The first time I saw her, I almost couldn't believe my eyes.

She was _beautiful_. So beautiful, that she nearly looked fake. Like she was a figurine that sprang to life, like Tyra Banks in that one Disney movie except this girl was so outrageously _gorgeous_. She laughed jovially as she sauntered through the square, flanked on either side by two boys that were easily two heads taller than her. She looked up at the one on her left with such an intense blue gaze that I, even at my distance, was mesmerized.

She parted plump pink lips to tell him something and he retaliated with a shove, pushing her into the guy on her other side who flushed and was quick to put distance between the two of them. She rolled her eyes at his display as he waved awkwardly, and they parted ways: the awkward man going inside the cafeteria building, the beautiful girl and her friend toward the parking lot, leaving me alone where I stood in the center of the commons with a blush on my cheeks and my food forgotten in my hands.

The second time I saw her, I didn't immediately know it was _her_ but I was equally as mesmerized.

She wore a sequined leotard that left nothing to the imagination but there was no discomfort or unease on her face as she danced, flipped, spun, bounced, and ran across the trampoline floor in the corner of the gym. As she left that apparatus for the uneven bars, she hardly broke a sweat, her breath as even as if she'd just walked from her class to her car.

I watched her, my boots dangling from my hands and my skirt tickling the back of my thighs. She flew through the air like a leaf in the wind, breezing from one bar to the other without any apparent difficulty at all. It was with a determined air that I finally looked away to walk towards the skating rink in the second half of the building, looking away from the girl's toned thighs and velvety brown skin dusted with chalk, listening with an intense gaze to who was presumably her coach. As I glanced one more time at her, though, her eyes looked around and met mine, and for an instant it was as if her blue gaze and my green locked together.

She smiled at me with a bright, shiny teeth and I somehow managed to reciprocate the gesture before turning the corner.

The third time I saw her, I was in the middle of practicing a routine when I made the mistake of glancing towards the audience and seeing her intense blue eyes. I stilled the butterflies fluttering around in my chest and fought to finish my set, but that didn't erase the nervousness that quickened my pace. My coach continued to hurl pieces of advice at me, clapping in rhythm to help me maintain my speed. When I finished up, freezing as my routine came to an end and then gliding towards the sidelines, I refused to glance at the audience where a deafening cheer was echoing around the empty stadium.

"Who _is_ that?" my coach asked, and I kept my head low, busying myself with putting the guards on my skates.

"One of the gymnasts," I muttered.

She continued on, but her words went right past me and she trailed off - when I looked back up, the girl was standing in front of me, her eyes bright and her dark cheeks flushed.

"You're Asami, right?" she asked, her - surprisingly husky - voice trilling nervously. "I've seen you around on campus, but I've never, uh," she ran a hand through her hair, flashing a smile at me, "I've never had the courage to talk to you.

I extended a hand out to her, watching out of the side of my eye as my coach drifted away from us. "Asami Sato," I introduced myself, and her smile - if it was even possible - widened.

"I'm Korra Takotna!" she told me, and then her eyes went round as she looked back at the rink. "Your routine was - well, it was beautiful! I wish I had your grace, but I'm all strength. I've been taking ballet to see if that'll help me out, but so far it's been a lost cause. Technically, I'm flawless, or so my coach tells me, but I'm too jerky, you know? I go from one exercise to another but there's no _flow_ …."

Korra looked back up at me and quieted, but I smiled at her encouragingly. "I was watching some of your apparatuses a while back, and it was almost like you - well, on uneven bars, it was like you were flying between them. It didn't seem jerky at all. And on floor, you were beautiful, I mean, honestly."

"Floor is my worst apparatus," she admitted sheepishly. "I use too much force and overshoot myself.

I shook my head. "But that isn't a bad thing! You can use that strength in your favor."

Korra eyed me and then the watch on her wrist.

"It's kinda last minute," she began, "but would you, uh, like to go out for dinner?" she asked.

Inside my stomach the butterflies erupted once again, and I fought a nervous giggle as I nodded my head. "I'd love to, but we should maybe change first."

Korra looked down at her leotard (today a long-sleeved sky blue bodice with white sequin accents along the chest) and at my own dress (deep red with a yellow and red skirt that mimicked fire as I twirled) before she, once again, ran a hand through her hair. With a grin, she replied, "You mean the pizza guys won't like all of this raw, unadulterated power traipsing through their lobby?"


	2. Lasting Impressions

With an uncontrollable fluttering in my chest, I invited Korra to meet me for a ballet rehearsal. ("You said you're practicing so you can learn to be more fluid, right? Well, I have to do the same thing. You should come with me.")

She arrived in drop-crotch sweatpants and a racerback, emphasizing her broad shoulders and just how tiny she was. For a moment, I was stunned at how serious she looked, with her bob still damp from sweat and her "I own the world" strut - until she saw me, grinned, and flexed her arms, tripping over her shoelaces in her distraction.

We started with pair stretches: sitting on the floor with our feet pressed together, pulling and stretching each other over our legs until our chests bumped into our knees. Korra's hands were warm and dry, almost chapped against my own, an attribute she told me came from the culmination of sweat and chalk for hours a day, nearly every day since she could walk.

And somehow, in the midst of our warm-ups, I forgot about the anxiety bubbling inside my stomach, the nervousness that encompassed me when I thought about Korra Takotna, the Beautiful. Korra Takotna, the Gymnast. This was Korra Takotna, the Goofball, and her smile was crooked from a broken jaw when she took up boxing, her legs longer than she knew what to do with from a growth spurt when she tore her ACL, her laughter so deep that she snorted every time.

In time, the rehearsal strayed further and further away from any legitimate practice, and it turned more and more into a Girls Day. That isn't to say no progress was made, but the initial goal of stressing gracefulness and fluidity was lost. Korra tried to prove she was more flexible, while I - albeit, at first, unwillingly - proved that my balance was superior. She grinned and chuckled, snorted and choked on her laughter when she watched me try and outlast her in a handstand contest, falling only seconds after me because she couldn't hold herself together.

We finally parted ways after we were simply too exhausted to keep going, and I went home and collapsed in my bed, still wearing my leotard and tights, Korra's laughter echoing throughout my head.

* * *

She was grace and elegance all wrapped up in form-fitting dresses and heavy bladed boots. She exuded brilliance with every spin, every smile, every breath that left her mouth and every translucent puff of air that swirled around her head in the cold arena.

When she practiced, she held her head high and stuck her chest out: "I am a queen," she seemed to say. "I am _the_ queen." When she fell, she nodded, recognised what she did wrong, got back up, and she never made the same mistake again. Her patience was as strong as her body was, it appeared.

And yet as regal as she was in the rink, as poised and fluid on frozen ice balanced on only two blades as she was, she was just as adept on solid earth. Her chest to the sky, she glided as easily on the ground as she in the rink. She stood tall and sure, rock solid in her composure.

She was talented in everything, it seemed, but she did have at least one major fault: keeping her interests - and her dorkiness - at bay. She relished in the drama of Romeo and Juliet-style rom-coms, but her true guilty pleasure lied in her love for any variant of the classic Cinderella. I fought the urge to laugh at her anytime she cried as Cinderella's dress was ruined, or as Cinderella's night was sabotaged, or as Cinderella's Happy Ending was compromised by the wicked step-mother no matter how many times she'd seen the movie at hand, but the passion in her eyes and the splotchiness of her cheeks knocked any vindictive humor right out of me, and then I had to fight the urge to grab onto her and hold her tight, to press kisses to her forehead until she smiled one more time.

When we part ways in the evenings, Bolin tells me I should just ask her out, but I adamantly refuse: "She isn't even into girls," I tell him.


	3. Meet

Train. Eat. Shower. Class. Sleep.

Train. Eat. Shower. Class. Sleep.

Sometimes, a meet.

There was a bustling chatter interlaced among the booming speakers and announcers, and I watched as my team had what was, arguably, our worst meet all year: Opal, usually such a natural on beam, came up too short on her final landing and sprained her ankle; Kuvira, a machine on vault, overshot her landing and jumped right off of the mat; Jinora, Master of the uneven bars, miscalculated the distance and fell flat on her chest.

The meet, overall, was not a great one, but not for my team alone, and somehow - _somehow_ \- we still had a shot of placing on the podium if I absolutely nailed my floor routine. My worst apparatus.

As the last performer and as one of the few who had yet to make a notable mistake in any routine, everyone watched with bated breath to see if the pressure would ruin my head or if it would ground me. I hardly listened to my coach's words of advice as my blood pumped through my body, my nerves muffling everything around me, but when she patted her hand against my back and guided me toward the floor, something broke through the haze.

Beside Mako and Bolin (who held up an iPad where I could vaguely recognize my parents watching), Asami stood in the part of the audience reserved for family and friends of the athletes. Her hair elaborately curled, her makeup expertly applied, a grin on her face and two thumbs in the air, she cheered, hooped, and hollered as I waited for my cue.

Bringing my hands to my chest, I felt my nerves subside in favor of a burning determination. With Asami's excited face welded into my mind, I focused on my routine, took a deep breath, and heard the first note of my music.

* * *

Ninety seconds never passed by so quickly, but by the fact that I didn't fall, step out of bounds, or trip on my own two feet, and by the thunderous applause echoing through the room, I knew I did well. I stepped off of the platform and was met by my team, smiles on each of their faces as they embraced me, but I left them without a second thought. I made my way to the family sector, where Mako and Bolin grinned at me with their homemade banner in between them, and Asami looked like she was trying not to cry.

"You inspired it," I told her immediately, and out of her chest bubbled a mixture of laughing and crying, and despite the divider between us, she grabbed my shoulders and pulled me close. (On solid ground she's two inches taller than me, but she wore only heels outside of the gym and I could barely reach my head above her collarbone, but she was warm and smelled like cherry blossoms, her embrace trembling but secure, and I shut my eyes into her hair and let out a deep shuddering breath.)

I didn't catch my actual score over the speakers as I was bombarded first with deafening cheers and my team was pulling me away from Asami to launch themselves at me. My score put us in second place, despite the failures on the other apparatuses.


End file.
